~ MA, CCC, RP, E-RYT

A year has shed its skin, yet again. The dark days have reached their darkest and are now gaining light each morning we wake. Some speak of resolutions. I prefer to set intentions.

Drink water. Take rest. Eat well. Love wholeheartedly. Why then, if the answers are so simple, do we meander down paths of suffering?

The human heart is only complicated by the intricacies of our minds. 2018 came with challenges that were circumstantial as most challenges are for me. Some of you may have gone through a similar spin around the sun over the last 365 days. Some of you may have had a year of plenty and are now entering circumstantial challenges of your own. Either way, yoga reminds us of the impermanence of it all. The outcome of any state of suffering can be a return to yourself if you choose it to be that way; a return to self, to your heart, to a place of deep self-love and respect. Which in turn implies a return to the practice and to an understanding that the practice has 8 limbs/ components. Yoga is not the physical practice. It is not meditation. It is not the pranayama. Those are simply the tools, which are part of a whole system of self-care. Like any other system that is made up of parts that require one another for the intricate workings of the whole, being in a state of yoga (fully awake, open, non-reactive, and responsive to life from the loving-kindness of your heart) is something we come home to by cultivating and maintaining all the working parts. I speak of: the Yamas, the Niyamas, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana, and Samadhi. If this is jargon to you, let me explain.

The Yamas and Niyamas, in Yoga, refer to the social and personal observances – the ethics of our interactions with others and ourselves. There are ten essential “rules” or ethical guidelines, if you will, that are described as a template for how to live your life in a way that frees your mind from self-created anxiety, regret, and all the other mental obstacles that stand in the way of living freely and happily. The Yamas describe the following five approaches to take in your social interactions: non-harm (non-violence), speaking truth (this goes with non-harm), non-stealing (not taking what isn’t rightfully yours), ethical use of your energy (this includes sexual energy), and non-grasping (non-greed/ not taking more than what you need). The Niyamas describe an additional set of guidelines specific to your personal disciplines: purity/ cleanliness (keeping everything clean from the food you ingest to the environment you live in), contentment (acceptance of reality as it is/ serenity without feeling a lack of what’s not there), tapas (discipline in your actions/ purifying austerity), self-reflection (observing and studying oneself), and finally, surrendering to the highest (letting go of what is out of our control and having faith in a higher power).

For the sake of this post, I won’t go in any depth on the other 6 limbs. Simply, they include: the physical postures (asana), the breathing practices (pranayama), the withdrawal from external stimuli (pratyahara), concentration practices (dharana), meditation practices (dhyana), and lastly, Samadhi refers to the experience of “being one with everything” – I laugh at this statement because it sounds silly and cliche. But really, when we drop into a meditation practice so deeply and the mind becomes so clear and pure, there is an unmistakable experience where we awaken to the reality that time and space are illusions and we witness ourselves in direct connection with a reality of things that is timeless, formless, ever-present, and all pervading. It’s beautiful. It’s impossible to stay in that state for we still have tasks at hand and need to live in a place of action to accomplish daily chores and routines. However, to dip into that state for a moment each day allows you to stay connected to that part of yourself that is pure and loving and wholehearted.

If the end goal is simply to live a life that is free from mental suffering; to breathe more freely, to interact more peacefully; to spend less time in rumination, regret, dwelling, and fear. If the goal is to live the next year and beyond with an awareness of the plentifulness of life. Then, the means are the full 8 limbs of the practice. To sit in meditation is very difficult without adequate care for your body through an asana practice, eating healthy foods, and sleeping well. To achieve a state of samadhi is difficult without first learning to concentrate your mind, then to maintain that focus in a meditative state. To move through your body and to then sit (to even get yourself to your mat for that matter) is extremely difficult if you aren’t following the guidelines of the Yamas and the Niyamas.

Like any system, if you only practice parts of it, the effects of the intricate workings of the system will get watered down. I lost connection to my practice in the beginning of 2018, mostly because I neglected myself. I reconnected with it through love and loss, and a return to myself. And this is all part of the ebb and flow of life. It’s like a glass mountain that we climb: at times we get to a certain height and then “relapse” back to old unhelpful patterns – we slide back down the glass mountain and seemingly find ourselves even further down than where we last started. This is where the tapas, the self-reflection, and the surrendering kick in. We bring ourselves back to our hearts. We sit. We observe. We let go. We reflect. We let go some more. And all this with an unmistakable discipline and a trust in the unknown, the unforeseen, and the uncontrollable. We simply climb back up to where we had fallen and then keep moving along, without an attachment to any particular height. We just move forward as there is nowhere else to go.

Here’s to a year of plenty, in whatever shape it comes. Here’s to a return to the 8 limbs of the practice that is so beautiful to me. May you live your intentions as we enter 2019.

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I offer this poem as it brought words to an understanding of what I needed from those around me with a recent loss I’ve encountered. It was the loss of someone whose love reminds me of the beauty, tenderness, and inspiration of the monarch butterfly. Perfectly, he took me strolling through a field of milkweeds on one of our first dates. I love you always. Thank you to Jan Falls, a dear friend and fellow therapist, who gifted me with this poem one morning last week – a morning when the loss struck me; when the abrupt truth of it met my disbelief and there were no words of condolences that felt right for anyone to speak other than to say “I don’t know what to say”.

BLESSING FOR THE BROKENHEARTED by Jan Richardson from “The Cure for Sorrow: a Book of Blessings for Times of Grief”

There is no remedy for love but to love more. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Let us agree for now that we will not say the breaking makes us stronger or that it is better to have this pain than to have done without this love.

Let us promise we will not tell ourselves time will heal the wound, when every day our waking opens it anew.

Perhaps for now it can be enough to simply marvel at the mystery of how a heart so broken can go on beating, as if it were made for precisely this —

as if it knows the only cure for love is more of it,

as if it sees the heart’s sole remedy for breaking is to love still,

as if it trusts that its own persistent pulse is the rhythm of a blessing we cannot begin to fathom but will save us nonetheless.

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What if when you were driving, your full attention was on driving? What if when you were eating, you were completely absorbed in the nourishment of your mind? While having a conversation, what if your focus was on listening deeply? What if when the sun was shining, you relished in its light and warmth; and when it was raining, you stepped outside to feel the raindrops on your skin? What if during heartbreak, you made friends with your pain? What if your attitude towards the sensations was “these are deliciously sensational” as opposed to “please go away”? What if in the wake of day, you paid more concern to the preparation of your mind than you did of your appearance? What if when your addictive urges arose, you simply observed them and let them pass? And when they were absent, what if you noticed your peace of mind? What if you followed your dreams? What if you trusted the wisdom of your body? What if when doubt was present, you could just name it and grin? What if you had the mental clarity to distinguish between what was personal and what wasn’t? Imagine the possibilities. What if it was easy to let things go? What if you found yourself living according to your true values? What if you spoke your truth in a non-harming way? What if regrets and dwellings and resentments served as messengers toward your growth by prompting helpful reflection? What if you rejected nothing? But instead knew how to work with everything? What if you could sit in silence for hours? What if you could turn to the trees and the rivers and the elements for their teachings? What if you made space in your life; purged and shedded things regularly to feel the lightness in your step? What if you put out in the world the love and kindness you wish to receive? What if you never took more than you needed? What if you climbed mountains, took in fresh air, ate clean foods, socialized freely, and let your mind flow through time and space? What if you trusted the unknown?

What if these were the possibilities? Some say meditation just may ruin your life.

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“I want to live in a world where people are inspired to actively respond to our personal, social, environmental, and economic challenges” ~ Micheal Stone

I was listening to a radio interview with Feist a little over a week after Michael’s passing. She was sharing the inspiration for her Pleasure album, but more specifically the significance of her song “Get Not High, Get Not Low”. Her exact words, I can’t remember. But what I took away from it was that she, as an artist, dreamed and had ambition to find a greater balance between the highs and the lows that characterized her reality and its expression. She used words like “Zen”, “balance”, and “even”, when describing her ideal way of life in which she could discover what living outside of the extremes would be like. And then, the interviewer (I apologize for not having noted who it was), asked whether Feist thought that the very creativity, imagination, and emotion that fuels her art would then die – whether it was possible for an artist to have both: a balanced, zen life and produce works of art that move people to feel and live deeply. And Feist simply said “I don’t know. That’s a good question.”

It made me think of Michael.

Dear Michael, I was meant to write you an email after your last visit to Ottawa. With more time and reflection, I will write you an open letter – in your name and memory. For now, I simply hold your vision in mind and trust that clarity will come in terms how to carry the teachings and mental health awareness forward when someone like yourself has gone from the only reality we know.

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If you wish to understand a concept, study the root language and the meaning of the root word from which the modern concept was derived. There is incredible wisdom in this approach to studying and understanding the qualities of our human experience.

It was through my studies in yoga therapy that I began to pay very close attention to the distinction between addressing health and healing through the lens perennial wisdom vs. evolving science. If you google “Perennial wisdom”, you will likely see the Latin translation, “Philosophia perennis”. And the definition of that is “a core of philosophical truths that is hypothesized to exist independently of and unaffected by time or place”. Evolving Science, however, refers to the evolution of what is known to be true. In other words, as scientific approaches, thoughts, measures, theories, protocols, tools, treatment practices grow and change overtime, what is known to be true also grows and changes overtime. Ask any medical professional to point out the differences and the relevance of their studies from 20 years ago to today’s application of medical science and they will tell you that what is known to be factual evidence in terms of the cause and treatment of most diseases has greatly shifted. In the 70s, homosexuality was a proven and published disease with a specific set of diagnostic criteria, for example. The treatment for Schizophrenia and many other mental health disorders involved scientifically sound treatment approaches such as electro shock therapy and commitment to asylums. Not that long ago, in an age when women had no rights and no voice, the treatment for “hysteria” which was a diagnosed disease based on women’s emotional and behavioural hormonal imbalance, was treated by the actual removal of the uterus. All this was done in good faith and profound trust in science. Yet, 10, 20, 30 years later, what is true has changed. And 10, 20, 30 years from now, today’s scientific truths will also have changed. I can almost guarantee that chemotherapy will be something we look back on and say “can you believe we used to think that poisoning the system was the answer?”. The times of giving Ritalin to 5 year olds for the treatment of ADHD will have long passed. And the belief that taking antidepressants as a means of changing brain chemistry will also shift in some unknown direction.

To come back to Perennial Wisdom, Yoga Therapy, and the study of root languages: I don’t reject modern science, but I do base my therapeutic approaches more on philosophical truths that have remained unaffected by place and time and I go back to these truths to inform my understanding of how to support a person who is not seeing results in the treatment they are receiving through a scientifically proven pharmaceutical or pathology-based approach. Please don’t misunderstand me. Our scientific and medical advancements are astounding. They have saved lives and given chances to people who 20 years ago would have died under the same health conditions. What I am saying is that Perennial Wisdom is something we must keep integrating and going back to when what we think to be true is proven wrong.

One of the missing aspects in evolutionary science is the spiritual component of our human experience. This is where root languages come in. In the most simple terms, yoga therapy is 90% working with the breath. In many root languages, such as Latin, the word for breath is spirit. The translation of Psyche in Latin, is also the human soul, mind, spirit. But in our Western Psychology, we have come very far from that concept. In yoga therapy, the root of all suffering is “Avidya”, which in Sanskrit, means a wrong understanding that we are alone and separate – an ignorance of our interconnectedness, our whole and complete nature. In my therapeutic approach, regardless of the person’s culture, religion or non-religion, age, gender, mobility, sexuality, diagnosis, what I am most interested in is their connection to themselves, others, and the world; their relationship to life and death. When the person is willing, we work directly with their breath. There is no need to believe in anything spiritual if what we understand about spirituality is simply that we become free from emotional and mental suffering when we can come back home to our heart, breathe freely, and live in whole connection to ourselves and the world around us. We are free from suffering when we remember and wake up to an experience that we are not alone and separate from one another.

Science may never be able to prove or show evidence for things that can’t be intellectually explained or measured by tools developed through the rational mind. Perennial wisdom is something we can simply trust because it keeps showing up. What was true in ancient times, remains true today. We are not separate from one another. Yet, when we believe that we are, we suffer. Scientific assessment of this would be categorized as depression, anxiety, PTSD, insecure attachment, and medication may be seen as the answer. Let’s not forget the deeper aspect of our human experience and the innate resilience that perennial wisdom can remind us to tap into.

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We all had a stake in it; we all had something to win and something to lose. Stuck in the mud, tears streaming down my face. I had already been there for two hours and the quad just wouldn’t budge. My body was just too small to give it gas with my thumb and push and lift the whole thing at the same time. Even though it took me two hours to admit that to myself – I kept saying “I can do this!” and would give it another try. And then another. But each time, I sunk myself deeper into the mud hole and the quad was now on its side. Maybe I was just trying to distract myself from the cloud of black flies. They are the reason I finally broke – my face itchy and swollen and my ears in a hot rage. What the fuck were they thinking giving me a quad with no brakes? No matter how deplorable the work conditions, we all kept going back year after year. Sure, I’ll deliver for my own crew. As though I was superwoman with extreme physical strength and mechanical skills. What was it with me, trying to prove some sort of gender equivalency? I could really use one of the guys right about now I kept thinking to myself. At this point, I knew my whole team would be soon sitting on the road waiting for trees. So, I abandoned the quad and walked the remaining five k. Sure enough, all thirteen of them were just waiting for me to show. When I entered the block with no quad and no trees – Well, they were unimpressed to say the least. Some quite pissed off, not at all surprisingly.

At 7 am that morning, I had given them a speech. I wish I could say it was the motivational kind, but no. It was more of a tough love, you’re not working hard enough, give ’em shit kind of speech. They all had to plant a lot that day – averaging 2000 trees each – for us to move on from that hell block where we had been working already for 8 days. I had been set on wrapping it up today. In my attempt to push my crew to plant hard, I found myself imitating the male bosses I had had in the past. Tried to make the long walk into the land seem trivial with stories of “back in my day” and mock them for acting like pussies for complaining. I was going to bust my tail for them I had decided. So, they better do the same. Essentially, I started my day angry hoping it would get me through what seemed like a ridiculous task. What my crew didn’t know was that I had only slept three hours. I had calculated everything. I did two trips in with trees the night before. Loaded up with a truck load at the tree cash at 5 am that very day. If I managed to do two quad runs per hour, we would be good, with two more truck runs to the tree cash in between.

So, those of them that understood how high the stakes were, loaded up their first bag-up with 50 lbs. of trees to walk in. Some of them did so quietly and marched through the first mud hole with determination. They showed they were on board and planned to just get’er done. Others whined and complained to which I could just say “we have to do this either way”. The worst of them was Andy. He had decided to boycott and stay in the van. Which was nothing new. He was about to get fired but somehow thought he was being smart.

By my third run in and out with the quad, I got so annoyed with Andy napping in my face that I radio-d the supervisor to please come get him and take him into town. Turns out my supervisor was more fed up than I was. He took Andy into town all right, but he swung by camp first for Andy to pack. He dropped him off at the bus depot with no money and told him to figure it out. Andy actually owed camp fees and hadn’t earned crap.

As I saw my crew when I entered the block on foot with no trees, I thought back to that moment when my supervisor had come to get Andy and check in. He had asked if I was sure that I would be ok. He was more invested in me wrapping up that block that day than me. But I told him I’d be good on my own. I was ahead of the game. He double checked even, letting me know that if he left me, he wouldn’t be back till after dark. “Are you sure you don’t need help?”, he couldn’t have asked more explicitly – and two or three times. I wanted Andy out of my hair so badly that I said I was perfectly fine. I knew all the muddy sinks wet spots on my route like the back of my hand. We had already built a bridge over the worst spot. Which is exactly where I ended up getting stuck – not more than ten minutes after my supervisor was out of radio shot. The bridge was the exact width of the quad and in my over-confident rush, the front tire slipped and the quad flipped into the mud. Two hours I spent there. Wishing Andy was still in the van cause he would have been close enough to see me and be that extra hand.

But instead, my “I can do this even though I am a girl” attitude took over. We all had to go back to that block the next day – adding on another minimum wage pay day to be living in a swamp in Northern Ontario planting trees. Back at camp, the day would be washed away and we would all gather around the fire laughing and venting about how ridiculous it all was. For now, the van ride home once everyone had walked out was dead silent. Sometimes, that’s just the way we all needed it to be. Someone eventually cranked up the tunes and it help shift the mood. We did wrap up that block the next day and finally moved on to better land.

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I don’t remember all the details of what it actually felt like to be that depressed. I can make an effort to remember – if I sit here and close my eyes and embody a glimpse of the lethargic, heavy, sobbing memory. After all, it had been my norm and my way of being for over a decade from age thirteen and well into my late twenties. It was like being wrapped in a heavy blanket that restricted my mobility, with chains hanging from my limbs and neck, and my own voice talking more loudly in my own head than any noises around me. What I do remember clearly was how much effort it took for me to be present to reality. It was like swimming against a heavy current with everyone watching very closely and screaming “what’s wrong with you? Just swim and stop crying.”

Because my mind was so absent, distracted, and disconnected from what was happening in real time, I don’t remember much in terms of the sequence of events and I don’t share memories in the same way as my friends and family. I just remember things as someone who was watching passively from the sidelines. Or better yet, I was sitting on the couch and watching life go by on a screen from a completely different experience of place and time. My favourite thing to do and what I craved all day long was the feeling of closing my bedroom door, hibernating from the world, curling in a ball, crying profusely, and ruminating on how much I was hated by everybody including me. No joke. I craved it. Although I could somehow function through most of my schooling, sports, and other activities, my body spoke so loudly – begging me to just get out, get home, so I could sink and wallow in my self-pity. I just don’t remember everything that went on around me for that decade because of my foggy brain activity.

I see it now in people who come to see me to heal from this same feeling. And those who are courageous enough to admit what’s going on will say “but what if I don’t want to get better?” or “what is wrong with me that I actually like wallowing in my self-pity?”. I usually respond by acknowledging that reality as just a part of the ironic symptomatology. And I let them know that there is also a way out of that irony. Because while it’s comfortable in that predictable and familiar kind of way, it’s also an extremely lonely place to be. I do remember that very clearly. I remember feeling so alone, so on my own, and the ruminating was always about “why me?”. Yet, by curling up into a ball and literally shutting out the world around me, I got to not have to be responsible for anything including my own well-being. My room was my sanctuary where I could cry as heavily as I wanted to and just be with my sob story. It’s how I could let everyone know how badly they had hurt me. Come to think of it, it was a delusion of my only means of communicating what was going on with me. I kept hoping that someone would help me, instead of standing by the side of the river screaming “What’s wrong with you? Just swim and stop crying.” I finally did meet someone who showed me how to swim more efficiently – how to focus my mind so intently that I became able to get through the heavy current and breathe and see everything around me more clearly.

It wasn’t a straight forward, linear process. I’m talking another decade of on and off craving for the comfort of the sadness and loneliness that had been my identity. But eventually, it all became a distant memory. Healing is just that way – two steps forward, one step back, three forward, two back, as we meet and overcome all the obstacles along our way. I haven’t wallowed in that way in years now – turns out I know how to be happy.

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This seems like the perfect timing of sharing the take-aways of “A Mindful Leader Forum”that I attended last week. The President Elect for the U.S. is officially Donald Trump. I genuinely thought it was an impossibility. My faith in humanity was so strong that I disengaged from paying attention to the campaign weeks ago. I held strong in my perspective that there was no way in a million years that the American people would make that choice for their future – our future. I realize now that I failed to pay attention to how out of balance the world really is at such a crucial time of needed social change. A man who is in a state of ignorance has been placed in one of the World’s most powerful positions. And I believe he was elected by a population who are equally suffering from a state of ignorance. I don’t mean ignorance in a condescending way. I mean ignorance in the true sense of misapprehension, not-knowing, being blind to the truth of the interconnection of everything and everyone. For people to come to a point of thinking that Trump is the answer to helping them overcome their suffering means they have been too long focused on a narrow view of themselves; too long focused on blame vs. responsibility, on power vs. respect, and on their own advancement vs. that of humankind. I am still confused and trying to make sense of how this happened and what the way forward is.

I had the fortune last week of listening to a conversation among leaders of important corporations, government, and academia from across North America as well as the UK. The event was held at The Canadian Museum of Nature in a beautiful space for an inspiring evening. These leaders were people with a unified commitment to authentic mindfulness as a way of being – committed to people’s health and happiness. Companies like Google, Dell, and WestJet, were represented by the very people who brought the concepts of mindfulness into the cultures, decision-making, and human resource management and training within these companies. A Mindful Society, The Mindfulness Initiative in the UK, University of Toronto, The Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic, Health Canada, Mindful – a print and digital magazine, and other individual practitioners, were all a part of the conversation about bringing the practice of mindfulness into private and public sectors in Canada, specifically. The part of the conversation that captivated me the most was a discussion among these leaders about the challenges we face, as mindful leaders, when trying to bring mindfulness into the cultures of government, institutions, corporations, and not-for-profit sectors, including education, criminal justice, and health services. Sher Van Aarle, an economist and senior advisor for the Government of Canada, said: “We want our public servants to be happy people, to be excited, engaged. If we had that, we would have a more balanced society, a more balanced world.” She encouraged us to think about what mindfulness could do in our schools, and in our communities, especially those that can’t afford to pay for trainings.

Here are the notes I took from the reflections, questions, and contemplations that this group of leaders raised in the discussions of the challenges they have faced in their journey of leading from a state of mindfulness:

How do we have power without being mean, without having aggression? With power comes responsibility and therefore, leaders have a responsibility to be mindful of the way they exercise that power – to do it with kindness, compassion, wisdom, and in a state of awareness of what is going on within and all around themselves.

Mindfulness is an opportunity to think creatively about the kind of change we want and need.

With mindfulness as a part of our culture, conflicts would still occur, but when they arise, they would be resolved productively.

Compassionate Wisdom: A well trained mind is a powerful mind when you bring those two virtuous characteristics together.

By our own actions, by our own role-modeming, we can really change the world.

Imagine what would happen if you had people at every level of organization and in our political systems bringing consciousness to everything they did and were living their purpose.

Part of the problem is that people don’t see themselves as leaders, so the first step is to work with people in identifying with their own leadership capacity.

We also need to become skilled in de-mystifying and communicating what mindfulness really is.

The champions (the people trying to effect the change) within organizations are often isolated from the power structures and the decision-making.

Now, there is a bigger interest among the public and individuals in all sectors of our society, but the question then becomes: do we have enough mindfulness practitioners who are experienced enough and skilled enough to meet the demand with really authentic teachings and trainings?

People are beginning to understand how mindfulness can be helpful for individuals, but there is still a challenge in translating these benefits on a organizational level so that the people in power see and understand the value of how a mindful culture within their organization could help them achieve their organizational outcomes.

And lastly… it’s important to take religion out of it. Barry Boyce pointed out that while Buddhism founded the concepts of mindfulness, Buddhism shouldn’t “get a free ride”. He pointed out that we would never try to push Judaism or Catholicism onto people and into the culture of our government or our public services, so we need to be mindful of how to make mindfulness its own practice that is inclusive of and relevant for everyone and separate from religious beliefs and practices.

After Trump’s success in winning the presidency, I had to take a step back, and wonder how mindful leaders in the U.S. especially will become even more isolated than they already are. I can only hang on to the fact that we, in our human capacity, are limited in our view. We can’t see how things will play out, we can’t see what break-downs and break-throughs will arise. We can only focus on what is within our control, accept what is. We always have our practice to come back to – an awareness of what is happening inside and around us in each moment of every day will guide our actions from a place of clear-knowing. Keep doing things that are important in this world, and keep living from your heart.

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The more I study and understand the interconnections between our mind, body, and breath, the more I am intrigued about the relationship between our overall health and our level of happiness. I am currently studying Ayurveda in conjunction with the yoga therapy training I am coming to the end of. I decided to embark on studying further because of how often I see people’s mental wellness and happiness depleting along with their physical and physiological health. Without our health, basically, I don’t believe that any amount of wealth can bring us real contentment even if that wealth is a richness in relationships, money, and professional or personal achievements. When I speak of health, I include the psychological, physical, physiological, and spiritual aspects of our well-being. “The total is greater than the sum of its parts”. For the purpose of this post, I am referring even more specifically to our physical and physiological health as an important part of the overall system.

Our digestive fire is like the battery in our car. A healthy system is one whose bodily functions work in alignment with one another: the individual has a healthy appetite, regular bowel movements, good quality and quantity of sleep, etc. Healthy does not mean we don’t get sick, but when we do get sick, the body bounces back into alignment following the infection or illness and doesn’t stay out of balance. Health is also optimized when we don’t suppress any of the following bodily urges: gas/ bowel movements, urination, menstruation, sneezing, yawning, orgasm, tears, vomiting, hunger, breathing, burping, thirst, and sleep. These urges are not to be indulged in any excess either. Cravings can be healthy or unhealthy and so it requires having a healthy mind to be able to pay attention to the body’s natural and healthy urges while abstaining from the mental cravings that may be mistaken for natural urges.

The other thing I am recently becoming more aware of and intrigued by, is the Ayurvedic understanding of healthy eating that goes way beyond the common saying “we are what we eat”. According to Ayurveda (and which makes perfect sense), our health is not only dependent on what we do, but how we do it. When we exercise, do it in such a way as to listen to the body and be mindful of the choice of exercise we do. When we communicate, to communicate non-harmfully and clearly and in alignment with all other ethical precepts. And when we eat, it’s not just about what we ingest, but about how we ingest it, digest it, assimilate it, metabolize it, and eliminate it. It is not uncommon for people in today’s health-conscious world to fall ill or develop a disease and say “but I did everything right”. As a psychotherapist and yoga therapist, my intention is to work with people on this deeper level and in a way that assists them in restoring their overall health by working with the whole system toward the end goal of living a happy life. There are many people who eat well, do exercise, and maybe even practice yoga. If these same people, however, have a restricted and shallow breath, are suppressing some of their healthy and natural urges, and living with any other symptoms of anxiety, fear, or disintegration, the digestion, assimilation, metabolism, and elimination processes may be impeded, resulting in a manifestation of physical and physiological symptoms or conditions.

Once the health of the physical body and all of its functions is restored, greater mental clarity and contentment is possible, and vice versa. You can’t address one without looking at the whole. Yoga and its sister science, Ayurveda, are brilliant models for understanding the nature of our human system with very basic and simple concepts rooted in ancient wisdom.

The beauty in studying these ancient teachings is that it simply requires understanding and observing the nature that surrounds us all and applying that understanding to our own self-care.

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Every moment of every day presents us with opportunities to practice being present, speaking truth, listening, letting go, grounding, observing, paying attention to what is and what isn’t happening inside and all around us.

I am interested in all the beautiful complexities that make a person whole. I can only offer what I know. The rest I still have to learn.